Wednesday, September 4, 2013

My wife and I have a few rules when it comes to talking
about our kids online.

No names, no ages. A minimal number of photos. Past sins and
breakings of these rules (mostly by me; who am I kidding, all by me) have been
corrected, as far as the Internet will let us correct them.

And we don’t babble about our kids incessantly online. If
there’s trouble, we discuss it in person, face-to-face, only bringing in
outside help when needed or required. Our lives are not an open book online.

So I agree with some of what Amy Webb writes at Slate.com
about mentioning nothing of her daughter online.

Part of me thinks, however, that much of what Webb writes
about is borne of paranoia, rather than good parenting.

Check this out:

The process started in earnest as we were selecting her
name. We’d narrowed the list down to a few alternatives and ran each (and their
variants) through domain and keyword searches to see what was available. Next,
we crawled through Google to see what content had been posted with those name
combinations, and we also looked to see if a Gmail address was open.

With her name decided, we spent several hours registering
her URL and a vast array of social media sites. All of that tied back to a
single email account, which would act as a primary access key. We listed my
permanent email address as a secondary—just as you’d fill out financial
paperwork for a minor at a bank. We built a password management system for her
to store all of her login information.

On the day of her birth, our daughter already had accounts
at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Github. And to this day, we’ve never
posted any content.

Really? We’re so paranoid about online personae we’re
Googling names and email handles and such even before the kid is born – and
we’re letting the results of those searches dictate what name our kid is known
by? I suppose that would be a good thing if, say, your last name were Cyrus and
you were toying with the idea of naming your daughter Miley, but even then – if
the name Miley Cyrus means a lot to you, has a history in your family for good,
why let that twerking twerp’s online presence convince you to name the tot
Clementine?

This also assumes things like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
and other services are going to be around when the child wants to become
socially engaged online. By that time, Facebook’s core of early adopters is
going to be in the nursing home, talking about how the Internet was a lot
brighter and easier to read when they were kids and bragging about the new
onions they have hanging from their belts. We’re sure nothing new is going to
come along to replace the whiz-bang of today’s Internet with something even
flashier? My Dad was a Ford man, and we knew that growing up. Right now, I own
a Honda and a Toyota. Things change, folks.

I understand the desire to keep things private, especially
in today’s world of open everything. But striking a middle ground, where
children are not taboo subjects online, seems more sensible to me.

I also have to wonder – will this parenting also forbid
possibly embarrassing yearbook pictures? Will birthday party hosts cower in
fear when the Mean Internet Mommy descends upon them with thunderbolts when
they dare post a photo of their daughter attending another child’s birthday
party? Or photos from a school outing? Not everyone is going to have your safety-minded
but paranoia-fueled Internet world view, but they do know what happens when you
stir a big cauldron of crazy. The innocents of the Internet have a lot more to
fear from the Wrath of Mom than they have from any facial recognition
algorithms or corporate data mining.

It’s great to want to protect your kids. I hope at the same
time you’re protecting them that you’re teaching them about the Internet,
showing them your own Facebook and discussing what is and what is not
appropriate to post online, so when you hand over that envelope (and they don’t
look at it as if you’ve just handed them gift certificates for sauerkraut
candy) that they understand your concerns and are driven by curiosity, not fear
or an explosion of oversharing because they’ve finally been given the keys to
the car.

Just out of curiosity, I Googled myself, and my oldest boy.
Of me, there is a grand total of one photo available on the Internet, along
with two other images currently associated with my Facebook account. Of my son,
there are none. My Facebook and LinkedIn profiles turn up as the top two
results in the Google search of just my name. My son is nowhere to be found. A
more nuanced search turns up one photo of my son, with his face mostly obscured
by a camera he’s holding. I’m not too worried about that.

REALLY? AS IF IT WERE SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little. . .”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So you can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET – Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.